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Raise The White Flag
"The CPE is dead," says the first French newspaper to break the story: President Jacques Chirac has once again surrendered to street protests and scrapped the controversial First Employment Contract.
The announcement came from the Elysee Palace today, following a summit between Chirac and his prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who introduced the contract in a bid to reduce unemployment among the youth of France's sprawling poor suburbs.
Chirac was working to a deadline: Trade unions and student groups had threatened another day of all-out action if the CPE had not been withdrawn before tomorrow (April 11). The threat followed a previous offer from Chirac to alter the CPE law, which had been roundly condemned by protesters.
In the statement from the presidency, it was revealed that the government would replace the CPE with "measures to help disadvantaged young people find work." French newspapers report that possible new strategies include a scheme to subsidise employers to take on young workers from deprived estates - though how the cash-strapped French state will be able to create jobs for the estimated 50 percent of youngsters without work in the poor banlieus remains to be seen.
And the student protesters? Many of them, as a correspondent reported from France last week, are likely to be filling France's psychology graduate lake in the next year. Does the French government propose creating taxpayer-funded jobs for thousands of young psychologists over the next decade? (Don't laugh - the current British government has created hundreds of thousands of even more absurd jobs. Perhaps this is one area where France's students might be keen to learn from les Anglo Saxons.)
Solidarity is an admirable concept and few in France (or indeed, elsewhere in Europe) would disagree with the system of helping your fellow citizens when they fall on hard times. But stretching taxpayers and businesses even further because the recipients of working people's largesse have failed to take even a baby step towards change... well, there's a difference between solidarity and entitlement.
